The use of wireless devices, such as cellular telephones, laptops, PDAs, and the like, have exploded over the last couple decades in both the consumer market as well as the business market. Generally, wireless devices include a transceiver and communicate with other transceivers using a variety of communication protocols. For example, Wi-Fi networks are popular in homes and business and provide a user of a compatible device wireless access to the internet. WiFi networks are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard and provide short range connectivity. Many wireless devices are also compatible with one or more cellular networks to provide broader, longer range coverage. For example, many wireless devices communicate wirelessly to networks utilizing a Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM) or Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) standard.
These communications standards used by wireless devices are constantly evolving to provide greater services, including new features as well as better service. For example, the current standard being developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) is the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard. LTE is often marketed in the United States as “4G” and is often the subject of marketing campaigns by service providers. LTE is designed to provide greater throughput and higher speeds for users as well as providing a simpler architecture resulting in lower operating costs for service providers.
One of the bottlenecks in present LTE architecture relates to the design of the control channel. The capacity of the control channel in current downlink (DL) control channel designs is related to the number of available CCEs (control channel element) and the aggregation level assigned to each allocated control channel. Since the control channel region is restricted to e.g., three OFDM symbols, the base station may run out of resources for the transmission of control channel. Advances in LTE require implementation of flexible control channels that may be adapted to improve the capacity of the control channels and mitigate potential interference on the control channels.